Greg liked to start with maggots. Always. Three on the hook, cast out. Then he’d catapult some more maggots on to the surface of the water around the same area. Fish had very short memories and would feed constantly. Perch preferred a red maggot. White for bream.

If he hadn’t had a bite in half an hour, he’d change his bait. Perhaps go for a cocktail – a worm and a piece of sweetcorn. If that didn’t work, then he might change to what Ray was using if his friend was being more successful. Ray always had the widest range of bait with him – boilies, hemp, cat meat, dog biscuits, floaters in a stunning variety of bizarre flavours, such as tutti-frutti and strawberry split, pellets, groats, bog standard bread, breadflake and magic bread.

If a shark had wandered, unsuspecting, through the Grand Union Canal, Ray would have had something to hand to tempt it with.

‘Where have all our fishy little friends naffed off to today?’ Ray asked, exasperated. ‘We’ll have to move in a minute, matey, otherwise I’ll be getting some dynamite out of my box to blow the buggers out of the water!’

Greg looked over to his friend. ‘Do you think I’m a boring old fart?’

‘No, no, no,’ Ray said. ‘You like what you like. That’s a quality to be admired.’

He thought so too. Greg was a creature of habit, that was for sure. He liked his food plain. He liked his tea from the same mug. He liked the same toothpaste. He liked a certain regularity of mealtimes. But did that, per se, make him boring? Was old-fashioned steadiness a virtue that was currently overlooked?

How would Annie cope if, after all these years, he suddenly changed overnight into a person she didn’t recognise? Suddenly decided he didn’t like fishing? Suddenly started eating curries or staying out late? Began dressing like one of those daft forty-year-old blokes who wear teenagers’ clothes? Maybe got a tattoo?

But he was no more likely to do that than he was to . . . well, to suddenly announce that he was going to Peru.

Greg had always steered a steady course and it had served him well. He didn’t see any reason now to turn away from it.

At work, he’d watched some of the managers who came and went through his office. They wanted to do nothing but trample over everyone else on their fight to the top. And for what? A few extra pounds in their pockets, a bigger motor in the drive, a house that cost an arm and a leg to run that they never saw?